Ballet Austin Announces Awards for Butler Dance Education Center

Wendy Garofoli | Jun 13, 2008 | 0

A projection of the Butler Dance Education Center

AUSTIN, TX--Ballet Austin today announces a series of awards bestowed upon the Butler Dance Education Center and Community School, in recognition of the building's outstanding design and its place as a dynamic and transformative hub for movement.

The Butler Dance Education Center, located in the emerging downtown Arts and Entertainment District at 3rd and San Antonio, serves as the new home to Ballet Austin's artistic, executive, and administrative teams along with the professional company, apprentices, costume shop, Academy and popular Community School since the complex opened in September 2007.

Recent Butler Dance Education Center and Community awards include:
• 2008 Best Real Estate Awards – Architectural Design Winner: Austin Business Journal
• 2007 ASID Design Excellence Award – Best of Show: American Society of Interior Design
• 2007 ASID Design Excellence Award – First Place: American Society of Interior Design
• 2007 Best of Austin – Arts & Entertainment: The Austin Chronicle

The innovative 34,000 sq ft Butler Dance Education Center & Community School is a dramatic repurposing of the former Aus-Tex Printing facility. The complex houses seven rehearsal studios; a Pilates Center, and yoga and exercise studios; the Ballet Austin Community School which offers expanded curriculum, including a variety of dance and dance fitness classes, the AustinVentures StudioTheater, an in-house performance space with capacity to seat 287 people, a 60-seat community meeting room, and a two-story glass wall with a retractable scrim for massive projections.

Since its opening, the facility has brought more than 1,900 dance students and their families into the new urban, multi-use area surrounding the landmark Austin City Hall building. In 2008, the groundbreaking collaborative ballet Cult of Color: Call to Color premiered at AustinVentures StudioTheater, staged to sold-out audiences, garnering rave reviews.

Designed by The Bommarito Group with the support of Broaddus & Associates and Harvey-Cleary, the completion of the Butler Dance Education Center and Community School was made possible in large part to citywide visionaries and longtime leaders in arts philanthropy, Dr. Ernest and Sarah Butler, for whom the dance center and community school are named.

About Ballet Austin
As distinctive and dynamic as the city it calls home, Ballet Austin welcomes audiences near and far to participate in its "classically innovative" vision for the democratization of dance. With a rich history spanning five decades, acclaimed productions, and one of the nation's largest classical ballet academies, the organization is poised for an even greater future. From their new home at the Butler Dance Education Center and Community School in downtown Austin, Ballet Austin and artistic director Stephen Mills actively engage the community, dancers, and audiences alike. The New York Times proclaims Ballet Austin "a company with big ambitions" originating work that is "absorbing."
 

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Ballet, Teacher, Enthusiast, Studio, Performance, Summer Study (all tags)